Sense and Sensitivity
by The Lark Ascending
Summary: Ellie knows its impractical to hold on to feelings for her childhood friend Chris;Mariana falls for a silvertongued musician w.questionable mtvs and disdains the attentions of a mysterious Italian violin maker.Hows a girl supposed to make the Deans list?
1. Prologue

**_Prologue_**

In the small town of Colchester, provincial by today's metropolitan standard, the Prescott family had seen generations pass and eras come and go. Enough time had elapsed since their coming to the county that it was commonly believed by residents that Colchester had not existed before Prescotts came to it. This was no ill-founded notion with regard to an old New England township; indeed, scholars researched the matter, affirmed old William Prescott's place as founder of Colchester and first settler to the N Valley, and soon after launched a study of local genealogy to determine the reach of his patrimony. It came as something of a surprise to many of the townspeople when the results of the study revealed that most families of Prescott extraction (and Colchester origin) had long since moved to other parts of the country. Hardly a handful, so to speak, remained even in the New England states, while others, having ventured south or into the Midwest, were barely worth noting.

Who, then, were those of Prescott lineage whose common abode was Colchester at present? Dr. John Barton-Prescott wanted to know rather out of a personal interest in the matter, having arrived not so long ago in the district upon his assuming a position as Chair of Department at Colchester College. Dr. John and his wife had observed that townsfolk took for granted their connection to the old Prescott family, the _Colchester Prescotts; _they were informed at church, in faculty meetings and in the front yard by neighbors – all inadvertently – of this presumed relationship, and Dr. John saw no need to go into unnecessary detail with these quaint but well-meaning individuals, since after all it had been rumored among the Barton-Prescotts that some connection to a rural community in the N Valley region existed, if only by way of a distant cousin.

But consequently his curiosity was piqued. Dr. John's former domicile was a wealthy suburb of Boston, though his family had sustained a relatively moderate standard of living until a sudden and unaccountable increase in affluence enabled them to take up residence in Newton. His admission to Harvard was a happy turn of fate, following the inflation of his family's income directly. He was a good-natured man, already well liked by many of his underlings at the college, for he had no desire to work harder than was necessary himself, and therefore was lenient with his employees.

Of his wife's qualifications there was never any question among the townsfolk. Mrs. Barton-Prescott was, in the eyes of Colchester residents, thoroughly a woman of the world: she mixed Christian values with modern ethics and modern fashion: she was religious in her devotion to parish functions and the upkeep of the church, though professedly liberal in her views; her children had private music lessons and attended summer festivals abroad; she shopped only from catalogues and health-food stores, never compared prices or ingredients, and had been known to disdain a parish-member who hinted that butter was superior to Crisco when baking a piecrust. Of the good repute of Mrs. Barton-Prescott's family there could be no doubt in the mind of her devoted husband. Her father was Diplomat to a particular South American country, and he was related through marriage to the Kennedy family. That the Diplomat's daughter sometimes pronounced her vowels and _R_s very much like those of the Spanish tongue, and that she bore no resemblance to her father's wife, was of no account to the good people of Colchester; they welcomed her warmly. Needless to say, however, Mrs. Dr. John took little interest in matters of heredity that so tickled her husband's fancy.

Dr. John and his wife had been settled comfortably at the old Linford estate on the outskirts of Colchester for a month or so when the staff at the college Music Department convened for a midsummer review. At this point Dr. John was midway through his "Prescott Family Tree," as he fondly referred to it, and his materials were spread over a portion of his computer desk in the Music Building as well as at Linford in his study. Between his effusions of delight at seeing them all again and his attempt to impart at once to Mr. Robert Cleveland, professor of theory, his entire agenda for the imminent meeting, Dr. John could not help losing his grasp on a particularly relevant page of research.

Mr. Cleveland, who was not only Dr. John's colleague but also his brother-in-law, retrieved the errant article and returned it with perfect indifference. Mrs. Karen Allenham, professor of music history, politely turned her attention to her papers (of which she had a good many – more, indeed, than Dr. John had compiled for the appointment) and adjusted her glasses.

But for the presence of a fourth, the incident would have passed unremarked. But this good lady was known to keep company often with the Barton-Prescotts, on account of her being the sole administrative assistant in the Music Department, and having much to do with Dr. John in order to acquaint him with the way of things at the college. Also, though perhaps Mrs. Barton-Prescott would have preferred not to own it, Mrs. Jennifer Winters (that was the good lady's name) was in fact her Godmother, and among others had been helpful in obtaining the position of Chair for Dr. John.

Mrs. Winters was known and well liked by none too few of the townspeople and this happy circumstance made her connection to the Barton-Prescotts a more favorable one in that mistress's eyes. She was a widow and lived alone, though one of her Goddaughters had bided with her prior to her marriage. Said Goddaughter was Mrs. Barton-Prescott's own sister, recently become the lawful Mrs. Robert Cleveland, and the separation had been trying to the older lady, who dearly prized good company.

It was no shock to those who knew her that she exclaimed, on glimpsing the contents of Dr. John's paper,

"Well, if you haven't got the Norland girls' names written down there, John! Why didn't you ask me about the Norland girls? I could've told you they've got Prescott blood in their veins!"

Mr. Cleveland cleared his throat and looked at Mrs. Winters with narrowed eyes. Two spots of color appeared on Mrs. Allenham's pale cheeks, closer akin to freckles than feminine bloom, and she frowned till her mouth compressed into a thin line.

But their discomfiture was for naught, because Dr. John was quite of a mind with Mrs. Winters in that he believed good fellowship and closer acquaintance to be more pressing matters than any other on the agenda that day. Besides, he was oblivious to the impropriety the other two perceived in the secretary's inquiry into his personal affairs. In fact he was made well nigh jolly by it, since it gave him cause to speak of his project.

"I was just on the verge of asking you, Jenny," he explained, smiling widely, "because it looks precisely as if those girls were my own cousins. Robert; Mrs. Allenham; I've been looking for my blood relations in this area, since before I came here I was certain I had a few, our common ancestor being old Prescott himself. And lo, I've uncovered them! They live almost outside of town… does anyone know the Stirling House? – Yes, take a look, Robert. I confess I'm rather proud of myself! It even crossed my mind that I should forget composing for brass band and turn a genealogist. Ha ha!"

"Oh yes, I know the place," said Mrs. Allenham, seeming to relax a bit, or at any rate to be unable to hold her tongue on the matter. "It's a proper old house, but when I drove by it last I noticed the grounds were in disarray, and the wrap-around porch propped up with wood beams…"

Mr. Cleveland's scowl on studying his brother-in-law's work had grown so pronounced that Mrs. Allenham lapsed into silence and seemed to withdraw into her chair. Mrs. Winters interjected cheerfully,

"I've heard the Norland family is going through some rather difficult times. Poor dears, a single mother and three daughters, and now their grandfather's gone and died and the property and other assets passing to Ms. Norland's brother!"

Mr. Cleveland offered a skeptical 'harrumph' and said, "I'm sure, Jenny, old Mr. Norland didn't die on purpose."

"But Robert, how horrible for them!" expostulated his brother-in-law, and entreated Mrs. Winters to say more.

"You're very right, Robert, to say he didn't die on purpose – but he didn't leave Stirling House to his son of his own volition, either. In fact he left it to his daughter!"

"Did he!"

"I've heard that he willed the property to his daughter and her three daughters, but his son's wife was dissatisfied, and so they disputed his sister's claim – and now, I don't know what's happened to them over the last year."

"When you're ready, Dr. Barton-Prescott," ventured Mrs. Allenham, "I have questions about our incoming students' applications and auditions. Also, additional recruitment would be advantageous, since our chamber orchestra wants half a string section."

"Strings!" repeated Mrs. Winters. "Why didn't I make the connection before? One of the Norland girls plays the violin, and another the cello, and I'm sure they must be about the right age for college. When I last saw her them they looked almost grown!"

Dr. John snatched a sheet of letterhead from his writing desk and took a fountain pen from its sheath.

"This is an opportunity that won't be wasted," he said as he sat and began to write animatedly. "I'll meet my cousins right away, learn more of their situation, and offer a scholarship – we do have enough funds, Mrs. Allenham, I'm sure – well, of course, that is, if the girls really do play well. It will be wonderful for all parties! And my wife and I won't pass such lonely hours at Linford as we are forced to do sometimes these days."

"I'd forgotten how fast you move, John," said Mr. Cleveland with a smirk, "but even you shouldn't be hasty enough to quit your life's career for a science at which you are so –" he tossed the sheet of paper he'd been perusing on the table carelessly – "hopelessly bad."

Mrs. Winters laughed heartily, and Mrs. Allenham looked pained.

"I'm sure he's good at everything and bad at nothing, Robert. What are you going on about?" asked the former.

"The Norland girls aren't his cousins at all; look, see there; he's related to their cousin, who isn't really related to them either." Mr. Cleveland looked satisfied with himself for a moment, while his brother-in-law and Mrs. Winters appeared crestfallen, and Mrs. Allenham masked a smile.

But presently Dr. John Barton-Prescott cried,

"Don't be a killjoy, Robert! Of course they're my cousins. We have a common ancestor. Whether by blood or not is of little consequence to me. What do you say I write to them anyway, Jenny?"

Mrs. Winters clapped her hands delightedly, much like a small child would have done. "Yes, write to them, John, by all means! Such pretty girls, and one of them's sure to be intelligent!"

Dr. John fell to the task with relish.


	2. Chapter One

_**Chapter One**_

"All my childhood, Twixtmoon Hill used to glimmer in the dawn as if with fairy lights. But now look at it – I'm sure it's mourning our losses with us. The grape vines are sagging into the banking; the Hen House looks more destitute than usual, and there's a vine grown under the door and come up at the window. And see, Ellie, the baby firs – they're like phantoms among the birch this morning, the horizon is so gray. I have never seen such a bleak dawn in all my life."

Three girls were out early on an unusually cloudy September morning. They descended in height and age from that of Giselle, who was twenty and nearly five feet seven inches tall. The dolorously eloquent speaker was middle child Mariana, fifteen; and the littlest one Meg, a meager ten years old, who listened to her sister with wide hazel eyes that filled with tears.

"Oh, what are we going to do!" wailed Meg as she dragged her feet and tugged her eldest sister's arm. "I can't _bear_ the thought of leaving Stirling House, Ellie! I may die of grief. What about Mum? I think she'll die of grief too if she has to leave our home. She always has a headache now, and you think I don't know it but I heard her talking to the doctor about her _heartery_ problem. We'd be _orphans_ then, if – if something happened to Mum, too."

Ellie Norland pulled her little blonde sister to her side as they walked. "Meggie, we've talked about this before. – Mariana, I hope you see what happens when people speak too freely in front of others, without regard for who could be listening. Now, Meggie, I've told you that the doctors disagree on Mum's condition, but the majority says she doesn't have a tear in the carotid artery at all. If you ask me, all Mum needs to get over her headaches is a change of scenery. Once we're settled in our new apartment, we'll all be in better spirits."

"Oh yes, especially our dear uncle and _dearest _aunt," muttered Mariana with bitter sarcasm.

Ellie gave a small sigh. "There's nothing we can do about the way things turned out, Mari. Even Mum used to tell us that, before Grandpa died. It's no use living in the past or crying over spilled milk. We've gotten to know the true colors of Ed and Sue since they moved in, and it's become clear to everyone – yes, even you, Meggie – that Stirling House is far too small for the two of us families put together. No, Mari, don't go on about how it isn't fair. We've just got to move past this bump in the road and plan the rest of our lives starting from today."

Meg Norland moaned sorrowfully. "Oh, Ellie, I couldn't plan a _thing_. My mind's in a complete puddle."

"Muddle, darling," amended Mariana distractedly, turning round to look back at the family estate.

Giselle, or Ellie, as she preferred to be called, harbored deeper concerns for the fate of her family than she was willing to reveal to her younger sisters. Their futures were more uncertain than they could guess, but with their mother hardly able to tend to her own cares, Ellie felt that the responsibility of buoying them up from their sorrows rested squarely on her shoulders. Twenty felt like a ripe old age all of a sudden.

Mariana was rapidly maturing into a lovely young woman. With long blonde curls, sooty lashes, sea blue eyes and round rosy lips, she was prettier than either of her sisters. Her intellect, as far as Ellie could perceive it, was sharp when exercised, but Mariana preferred to give herself up to Gothic novels for whole days at a time instead of ordering her daylight hours in a balanced manner so as to include ample time for the study of music and the completion of her household chores. "There are no life lessons that can't be learned from great literature," Mariana would say, and because she was right, in a sense, Ellie had not the heart to try to enforce discipline on her teenage sister. Their mother was half the source of this philosophy, and so did nothing to counteract Mariana's excess in this regard. Sometimes, however, Mrs. Norland would engage her middle daughter in a bitter quarrel if the latter were called upon for assistance around the house and found to be indisposed.

Meg tended to resemble Mariana in her manner and preference for melodrama, only Ellie was considerably more worried over the outcome of her education. Ellie and Mariana had been schooled at home all their lives, but now with the upheaval in the family and an impending change of domicile, Ellie feared that little Meg was apt to get lost in the midst of it all. _At least Mariana and I did nothing but play music, read, and muck about outside all our childhood, _thought Ellie, _but Meggie watches too much TV. She does spend an awful lot of time climbing trees, but she can't pretend she's a monkey all her life, either; at least not without some other serious academic or artistic pursuit. _Then Ellie would chide herself. _Meggie is only ten! How can I lay the cares of life at her little feet? But time is the greatest thief of all, and he is always at my back these days, and I am constantly running away. Fleeing, Mari would say, in her romantic language._

"At least Chris is coming to the house today," announced Meg suddenly, reclaiming the attention of her two big sisters and grinning smugly.

"What do you mean, Meg?" Ellie demanded, as her pulse began to pound in her throat.

"Yesterday I went to the Post Office with Mum and we met him there, getting the mail for the household. Well, after Mum got in the car I ran back out to get a letter that I'd dropped accidentally on the floor, and I said to him, 'Oh, Chris, please come and see us today! We're starved for company since everything happened, and especially now that our cousins…' well, you know, the whole Fairchild family knows about the estrangement… 'now that our cousins don't come see us anymore we're awful lonely, Chris, so please visit! Anytime you like!' So of course he promised to come the next day, which is today, like I knew he would."

Mariana laughed in response and resumed her stroll, but Ellie, following, found her throat dry and her palms sweaty. She inwardly cursed her own lack of composure and good sense.

"Well that's very kind of him," she managed to express to her sisters as they passed by the peeling door of the Hen House and under the arches of grape vine and ivy that mingled above their heads.

The Fairchilds were neighbors and abutters of the Norlands at Stirling House. Mr. Fairchild senior had long been the girls' informal professor of music, and his older son Christopher was a good friend of Ellie. At times in their youth they had collaborated on the violin and piano in chamber recitals at the nearby academy of music, but because of the terrible discord among the Norland siblings upon the death of their father, Chris, as he was known to the sisters and their cousins, had undoubtedly found himself in an uncomfortable position along with the rest of his family. The Fairchilds were friends of several of the girls' aunts and uncles as well as the girls' mother, and the pressure to take sides had put a strain on all preexisting friendships. There was one other reason why Chris no longer came around to visit as often as he once had, but Ellie was ashamed to think of it, and had long ago disciplined herself to believe that he had forgotten it.

"Chris is the most boring fellow in the world," Mariana complained as the sisters traipsed on into the unruly environment of their backyard woods. "All stuffy and silent; it always takes him longer than anyone else to grasp the meaning of a simple joke, and then he is the only one laughing when everyone has already moved on to another topic."

"At least he's not totally without a sense of humor, then," Ellie protested mildly.

"Oh but I'm not done! You know him better than I do, Elle, which is why I can't understand how you manage to defend him all the time. His technique on the piano is wonderful, oh yes, but how unfeelingly he plays! And classical music is all he listens to. Don't you remember when he asked you to recall what his favorite song was, simply to attest to what bosom companions you two had become, and you couldn't remember for the life of you what it was because it was an _art song_? That's all perfectly normal for a professor of musicology, or even a conservatory student, but God, Elle, we were kids! He was just a boy, and already behaving like an old man. Just imagine it," and this she said in an affectedly deep voice, "'Hi, I'm a fifteen year old boy and my favorite song is _Gretchen am Spinnrade_ by Schubert.'"

"If I remember correctly, my own darling sister," countered Ellie, "you aren't fond of a great many styles of music yourself, apart from… hmm… any composition of Vaughan Williams or Rachmaninov. And then there's… ah, yes, Jewel. And once or twice I remember hearing that you hated Mozart and wished you could drown the whole genre of Heavy Metal in a bathtub. Such open-mindedness!"

"Oh please, you're the same yourself, only you try to hide it!" rejoined Mariana. "We can't help our romantic tendencies, any more than Chris can help his professorly ones, I suppose. Just because you discipline yourself to listen to 'a wide range of musical selections' doesn't make you better than me. At best it makes you dilettantish."

"It's 'better than I,' Mari, not 'better than me,'" Ellie corrected in a gentler tone.

"Well, I think Chris is alright," said Meg quietly. "He always pays attention to me."

"Does he, you little pig?" teased Mariana, diving at her little sister's ticklish sides with a roar that would have frightened away a prowling coyote. Meg's giggles, screeches and pleas for mercy filled the still air, and Ellie lagged behind her sisters as they chased each other up the hill, dodging the trees and occasionally falling face down into the loam as they went.

"You know who else thinks Chris is alright? You know who?" Mariana called over her shoulder.

Ellie could only smile.

"Who? Who? Who?" parroted Meg.

"Elle does."

As her sisters fairly screamed with laughter, Ellie thought back to the distant occasion on which a much younger Chris Fairchild had asked her much younger self if she could name his favorite song. It was one of those summers when neither had anything better to do, which circumstance allowed them to spend all their waking hours together, traversing the far reaches of Colchester from dawn till dusk (when Ellie's parents usually began to call for her). Her memory of those times was not by any means photographic, or even reasonably linear in nature; rather it was made up of a number of impressions, some visual, others aural and a few even simply tactile, that had remained within her as deeply as if they had been engraved on her very soul.

She remembered the heat of the sun on her back, and the dirt road crunching under their feet as they walked. Ellie remembered the way she felt when he walked a little nearer to her than usual; her heart had pounded then the same way it pounded now when she heard his name. Sometimes they had walked almost shoulder-to-shoulder, and she had been dizzy at times waiting for him to take her hand… but he never did, then, even when he was a hair's breadth from grasping it. So Ellie remembered other things, like the way his wavy brown hair had grown too long that summer, and was always hanging in his eyes. Still she thought he looked strange without it, long and wind-tossed like it was then. And then one day he'd said:

"Since you say we're best friends," (yes, she had said it first – but he had agreed immediately, and she'd said it only to defray the tension between them, so he wouldn't be frightened away from her,) "then you have to know my favorite song."

And then – she remembered not knowing what it was. _Song? Chris?_ He was a pianist, and they only ever played instrumental music together, of course, because Ellie was a violinist.

Later, after she'd been forced to admit her failure, she remembered him telling her why it was his favorite, though she felt fairly sure that it held the honored place no longer.

"You know Goethe's _Faustus," _he'd said, and she'd nodded, although she really only knew _of _it. He continued, "So Gretchen - who is Margaret, you know, Gretchen is her nickname - is alone. She's sitting at the spinning wheel and just spinning, spinning." He'd been moving his fingers over invisible piano keys as he said this. "She's thinking of her lover, and recalling everything about him that she can, because he's gone. And slowly she begins to realize he's not planning to come back for her, but every fiber of her being is longing for - ahem. Right, well she wants him back, basically. So that's the story, more or less, and Schubert sets this speech-like melody over a continuous figure in the piano accompaniment that is just like the constant motion of the spinning wheel in the poem. And at the highest point in the music, I mean, the point when the tension is highest - when you can feel Gretchen's longing rising from the depths of her soul and flooding her veins - well, ahem, basically that's when the figure in the piano drops out and leaves just the soprano voice alone, just as Gretchen remembers the, erm, the kiss. The kiss of Faust, of course. And - yeah, so, that's my favorite song. The devices he uses to build the harmonic tension to that one excruciatingly climactic point, I mean, it's incredible. It's just like sex!"

Ellie remembered a few moments of awkward silence before she began to laugh. Chris had joined her, and then they'd laughed together for a long time, until their stomachs hurt. She'd thought he had a bouncing laugh. His laugh was deep-throated even then, but would bounce up into the higher registers of his voice towards the end. If he only knew how that laugh had brightened her day whenever their paths had crossed in the intervening years! Ironically, it was also the laugh they'd shared on that day that had convinced her of what she'd feared: Chris could never be more than a brother to her. So why did she feel such discomfiture now at the mention of his name? Ellie was no closer to understanding her own lack of common sense than she was to understanding her sisters'. But she was quite certain that she ought to forget about it, as Chris had done years ago.

Still, as she walked aimlessly on, Ellie mouthed a few verses of _Faustus _that she had memorized after that summer.

'For him only, I look  
Out the window.  
Only for him do I go  
Out of the house.

His tall walk,  
His noble figure,  
His mouth's smile,  
His eyes' power,

And his mouth's  
Magic flow,  
His handclasp,  
and ah! his kiss!'

"Elle! Elle? Are you alright? Elle! Come look, we've found a foxhole. Come here!"

Stumbling over her feet clumsily as if woken from a trance, Ellie clambered over the rocks and tree stumps that crowned the top of Twixtmoon Hill to join her sisters. There were moments when Giselle Norland forgot about the ominous ticking of the internal clock that had haunted her since the dissolution of their happy home at the Stirling House - but they were not many. She scolded herself sharply and silently for allowing herself such a slip, just the kind that Mariana was often subject to. Chris might be coming to visit, but she wouldn't do herself or him the disservice of losing her cool.


	3. Chapter Two

_**Chapter Two**_

Edward Norland was a very sensitive man. He was sensitive, above all, to his own wants and hurts and other various feelings; but he prided himself, above all, on his sensitivity to others' feelings, and was therefore able to go through life with an air of self-righteousness that was only pitiable because it did not quite approach the more deeply gratifying sense of self-satisfaction for which he evidently tried. He had, moreover, a remarkable way of seeming to be intimately acquainted with the proverbial skeleton in the closet of every and any individual in the room, which was probably because he was: Edward Norland was a gossip, and if there were any pastime in the world to which he was more perfectly suited than the spreading of rumors, it must be to the art of starting them. By assuming a sympathetic manner that was by no means disingenuous, but by no means to be owned up to afterwards, he was as practiced at as he was apparently innocent of winning undeserved confidences from unsuspecting friends, neighbors, and family members, and later sharing them at large.

In his defense, Edward had probably started out as truly sensitive a little boy as any can be, being brought up in the shadow of, as it was his misfortune to be, a somewhat tyrannical older sister. When his keen sense of injustice had turned to a taste for cowardly revenge, or when this had taken the form of personal shame too deep to be rooted out by his well-meaning, pure-hearted but unforgivably middle class parents, was unknown by his regretful though unreproaching younger sister Susie. She only wished that her older brother might somehow be recalled from his tendency to familial disloyalty - at least that his shame might not be directed towards or openly blamed on his parents and siblings - but all this was certainly too much to ask of a sensitive man, who felt all the slight injuries from the time of his childhood up to adulthood with the pain and bitterness of one who has been wronged repeatedly. Still, he might have been saved from complete self-indulgence of character by attaching himself to a lifelong partner of virtue and graciousness. Instead, however, he married Sue.

Sue Larabee was an unhappy woman. It was more than the angry line between her brows, which told the world that she mostly scowled and rarely smiled; it was more than the way in which she lumbered about the house and sighed languorously, when visiting her husband's family at the Stirling House, to show her displeasure at having to endure their company. It was more, even, than the unapologetic way in which she ridiculed her mother-in-law, rejected her sister-in-law, and tried to form an enemy alliance with the wives of her husband's brothers. No, Sue Larabee went beyond all this: she alone had the power to influence Edward Norland, and she alone after the deaths of his parents chose to turn him against his siblings once and for all. In Mariana Norland's mind, Sue Larabee was almost on a par with Lady MacBeth; in Ellie Norland's more practical viewpoint, she was not so far from it as might be supposed from the reserved yet tactful manner displayed by the niece towards her uncle's wife.

The late Mr. and Mrs. Norland, parents of Beth, Edward, Susie and Preston, had willed Stirling House to their third child and her three daughters long before the event of their unexpected deaths ensured that exactly the opposite of their intentions and specific instructions should take place. For there is nothing like truth, plainly written, when hopelessly convoluted beyond recognition by a very good lawyer handsomely bribed, and very jealous siblings united against one who stands alone, to crumble to dust in the wind. Stirling House was at last in the hands of its righteous, if not rightful, owners - Susie Norland and her daughters prepared to leave the only home any of them had ever known, while Sue Larabee and Edward Norland prepared to inhabit it permanently - and the only reminders of several long years of family crisis which had presumably been necessary to arrive at this arrangement, as Susie was as little likely to give up her own property without a struggle as her siblings were to allow her to live there in peace, were the painful memories and eventual estrangement of all.

"Sometimes I think Dad _did _know his own mind when he wrote this will," would scarcely have passed Edward's lips without his wife's sullen question as to "whether his dad was ever of one mind about anything, but went back and forth and hedged around the issue enough to drive her out of the house, like all of his children after him, and if it hadn't been that she'd had Preston's first wife to commiserate with at the time, she'd have run away from the entire Norland family right then and there."

It is not for us to know whether her highly sensitive husband wished that she had run away; certainly several of her in-laws did, the current occupants of Stirling House in particular. It must be enough for us to learn that she successfully and permanently blinded him to all or any affection towards his younger sister that might have otherwise remained in his heart, and put into his head a scheme that led him to manipulate his older sister into a violent hatred of the younger. By these means they gained her support in wresting the house from its widowed mistress, their own full-blooded sister, and by these means did Susie Norland and her daughters remain alienated from her siblings, and the three girls from their cousins, for the better part of their lives.

When the invitation came from Dr. John, printed on college letterhead by that admirable woman and secretary Mrs. Winters and signed and effusively dedicated by the Chair of Department himself, there could be little excuse for mother or daughters not to accept it with high hopes. Colchester College had been the alma mater of Susie Norland's mother and uncles in the early 1900s, and Mariana was as taken with the romance of attending school where her grandmother and all other sorts of ancestors once had, as Ellie was relieved to have the opportunity present itself for future security and independence for herself, her mother and sisters. The older girls were presently scheduled for auditions at the lesser of the two Linford mansions, which housed the college music department, and the mother and her youngest daughter for an interview with Mrs. Barton-Prescott and a tour of their prospective apartments at the Linford estate proper. Now all that was left for the Norlands at Stirling House was to wait out the remainder of the early summer days, till they might hear from the college again and make plans for their immediate removal to Colchester.

Meanwhile, the renewal of a childhood friendship between Ellie and the neighbors' eldest son, Chris Fairchild, helped to pass the time in greater enjoyment and comfort than any of the girls could have hoped or expected.


End file.
